Today’s update on end of year enhancements includes a new Quick Search for legislation, the Congressional Record Index (back to 1995), and the History of Bills from the Congressional Record Index (available from the Actions tab). We have also brought over the State Legislature Websites page from THOMAS, which has links to state level websites similar to Congress.gov.

The Quick Search provides a form-based search with fields similar to those available from the Advanced Legislation Search on THOMAS. The Advanced Search on Congress.gov is still there with many additional fields and ways to search for those who want to delve deeper into the data. We are providing the new Quick Search interface based on user feedback, which highlights selected fields most likely needed for a search.

New State Legislature Websites page added in the December 20015 release

Could you explain a bit more how to locate the CR Index back to 1995? And then how to get to the History of Bills within any given index? When I click the link, I only see current content offered in the dropdown. Thanks!

The Congressional Record Index and History of Bills are only available in the current Congress right now. The prior Congresses will be added next. The information on a specific piece of legislation from the History of Bills is available under the Actions tab. For example on H.R.2250 with the Actions tab selected, you will see “Bill History – Congressional Record References.”

On 1st screen for introduced Bills, in addition to the tabs already present, I would appreciate having another tab added for “related bills”. That would save many hundreds of clicking to another screen to get that information, and I definitely need that information for each Bill being tracked.That information is included in Thomas, and not having it on the 1st screen in Congress.Gov will continue to require me to continue to use Thomas.

What is being searched when you do a quick search? On THOMAS it says “Search Bill Summary & Status” and I think I know what that means. But on this Congress.gov quick search it says “Legislation” and I’m not sure I know what that includes. Is it only searching legislation and not bill summary and status? On the “About Legislation” link on the quick search page it explains that “the legislation collection includes records for every bill and resolution.” What is a record? Does a record include bill summary and status or only bill text? If it includes bill text, why is there a separate place to check that says “include bill text in this search.” If the search is already for “Legislation,” why isn’t it automatically searching the legislation? It seems like you’re saying that legislation does not include bill text, but I would think that legislation means only bill text. Can you also explain what can be entered in the “Words / Phrases” box. It doesn’t seem to work the same as the THOMAS search. Thank you so much for any help you can provide.

Donald, There is a related bills tab on Congress.gov. For example, H.J.Res.78 lists two other bills. On THOMAS it only includes the relationship. On Congress.gov in addition to the relationship, the related bill titles are displayed and their latest action.

Also, there are 3 Related Bills search fields that may be useful to you. Find them in the dropdown menu. (Open the menu that has ‘Congress’ as the default. ‘Related Bills’ is at the bottom of that menu.)

One thing that I loved about the now-retired (07-05-2016) THOMAS system was the ability to conduct a key-word / key-phrase search of the text of the Congressional Record. The THOMAS system would tell you that it found items exactly matching your search criteria, or that the words were close to each other–but not identical to what you requested. Now, it seems that that ability has been completely taken away and replaced with absolutely nothing. Please restore the ability to conduct a key-word / key-phrase search of the text of the Congressional Record. Thank you.

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